The role of direct primaries in reforming the State in the USA (1865-1915)

The movement for direct primaries in the USA has been unable to produce significant effects until it succeeded in constructing an alliance with two others movements: the Civil Service Reform Movement and the Short Ballot Movement. Until then, the direct primaries movement had been unable to obtain stable majorities in the States, while later it became a major tool to contrast corruption inside the parties and in the civil service system. This essay describes the contribution the direct primaries gave, in the USA, to the reform of the State. As far as the empirical research argumentation is concerned, this contribution introduces only a part (the one concerning the USA between 1865 and 1915) of a more complex comparative design, which is structured on two approaches: a synchronic one (the state of the political system in Italy from 1871 to 1901 compared to the US system from 1865 to 1915) and a diachronic one (the state of the political system in Italy from 1892 to 1922 compared to the political system in Italy from 1992 to 2010). The main conclusions of the research, as well as of the pages presented here, are: a) many differences occur between the changes introduced at the end of the XIX century in the US system (which enforced the quality of democracy) and the changes introduced in the Italian system (which instead weakened the quality of democracy and contributed to the crisis of the Italian liberal State and to the advent of fascism); b) the primaries experienced in Italy in the last years, are quite different from the direct primaries realised in the USA, being instead more similar to the kind of primaries contrasted by the direct primaries movement at the end of the XIX century.

Keywords: Primary elections; Participation; Spoils system

Giuseppe Gangemi, Le <i>direct primaries</i> come contributo alla riforma dello Stato negli USA (1865-1915) in "PARTECIPAZIONE E CONFLITTO" 1/2011, pp 55-79, DOI: 10.3280/PACO2011-001003